CLINTON & CONGRESS

CLINTON & CONGRESS; A Touch of Harry in the Night

By David McCullough;

Published: December 2, 1994

WEST TISBURY, Mass.—
The similarities between the Republican triumph on Nov. 8 and the Congressional elections of 1946 are, understandably, the subject of great interest. Not only did the Republicans win the House and Senate by substantial majorities in both cases, recovering power after years of unbroken Democratic control, but the Democrat in the White House was humiliated, both at the polls and by the withering invective of the campaign.

And although the incoming Speaker of the House in 1946, Joseph W. Martin Jr., had none of the fire of a Newt Gingrich, he and the Republicans and Southern Democrats who dominated Capitol Hill felt they had a mandate to cut into the power of the Presidency and to turn back the New Deal.

Yet Harry S. Truman staged one of the great comebacks in political history. So an obvious question comes to mind: What does Bill Clinton have to do to be another Truman?

Truman had seen his popularity plunge from a record approval rating of greater than 80 percent during his first months in office to less than 40 percent by the mid-term election. He was ridiculed for his diminutive size, his Midwestern expressions and dress, his past ties to Kansas City's Pendergast political machine, even for his devotion to his mother. He was called stupid, corny, and, like Bill Clinton, a small-bore provincial pol who was too eager to please everybody.

The Democrats were mortified. Liberals complained that he was too conservative, conservatives that he was too liberal. When he returned to Washington after voting in Missouri, Dean Acheson, the Assistant Secretary of State, was the only Administration figure that even bothered to go to Union Station to welcome him.

But what is more interesting is what happened next: how Truman responded. Downcast he was not. Repudiation seemed to liberate him; he began to look and sound like a President of purpose and determination.

He stood behind his nominee for head of the Atomic Energy Commission, David Lilienthal, who was accused of having Communist ties by the vituperative Senator Kenneth McKellar, Democrat of Tennessee. Truman took on and bested John L. Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers. He put a balcony on the White House so that he and his wife, Bess, could enjoy outdoor privacy, and let the critics rant as they would. And in one of his wisest moves he named Gen. George C. Marshall as Secretary of State.

It was after the 1946 election, when the Truman Presidency should have been in sorry eclipse, that most of his landmark achievements came to pass -- the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the first civil rights message ever sent to Congress, the executive order to desegregate the armed forces, the recognition of Israel, the Berlin airlift.

Of course, not all these triumphs were entirely Truman's doing. Some came in response to world events. It was the sudden withdrawal of British support from Greece and Turkey in 1947 that led to the Truman Doctrine, the Soviet blockade of Berlin in June 1948 that inspired the airlift. Nor should General Marshall's immense influence be discounted, as Truman himself was the first to stress.

And without the bipartisan support of the legislature that he so roundly berated later as the "do nothing 80th Congress" run by "a bunch of old mossbacks" -- especially the leadership of Arthur Vandenberg, the Michigan Republican who headed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- there would have been no Truman Doctrine, no Marshall Plan.

But in the Presidency it is character that counts above all. Though never known to raise his voice with his staff, he could be tough as a boot when the chips were down. "We stay in Berlin," he said simply, emphatically, at the start of the crisis, at a time when there seemed no way to supply the beleaguered city.

The courage he is so widely remembered for was mainly the courage of his convictions. Warned by Southern Democrats and old friends back home that his civil rights program could cost him re-election, Truman responded that if he lost because of civil rights, then his failure would be in a good cause.

Like Bill Clinton, Truman was being pushed and pulled in all directions on domestic issues. His Cabinet, old friends on the Hill from his years in the Senate, big city Democratic bosses like Ed Flynn of the Bronx, former Roosevelt insiders, columnist and radio commentators -- they all seemed to know better than he how he should conduct himself.

His staff, especially his counsel Clark Clifford, urged him to "strike for new moral high ground." If Congress was determined to gut the New Deal, Mr. Clifford said, Truman should be even more determined to see it improved and expanded. The President called for more Federal aid for education, raising the minimum wage, expanding Social Security and a creating a national health insurance program, none of which Congress passed. It was this intractability on domestic matters that allowed Truman to tar the Congress as "do nothing" as he fought for election.

Truman wasn't always right. During this time he made the most reprehensible political decision of his Presidency, an executive order to create the loyalty program, under which all Federal employees were subject to investigations. Trying to appease the growing right-wing clamor over Communists in government, he only made matters worse.

Still, he knew who he was and he knew what he stood for. This helped him keep a sense of proportion and to work for what he felt was best for the country in the long run, never mind the polls and the nay-sayers.

From his diary entries and private correspondence, we know how low he often felt. "Any man in his right mind would never want to be President if he knew what it entails," he confided to his sister in 1947. Yet those around him heard none of this, no complaints, no whining.

Dean Acheson later said it was the "life force" in Truman that so amazed them all -- "his strongest, most inspiring quality, and always in the darkest, most difficult times." Acheson recalled the lines from Shakespeare's "Henry V," where the King -- Harry -- walks among his dispirited, terrified troops in the dark of night before the Battle of Agincourt: "every wretch, pining and pale before,/ Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks . . . His liberal eye doth give to every one . . . A little touch of Harry in the night."

Truman had little capacity to move an audience as could Franklin D. Roosevelt (or for that matter, Bill Clinton). Nonetheless, on the night of July 15, 1948, in a sweltering Philadelphia auditorium, wearing a snow-white "ice cream suit," he walked onto a floodlit stage and brought a weary, dispirited Democratic National Convention to its feet cheering, as no one had thought possible.

"I will win this election and make these Republicans like it -- don't you forget that," he said, his hands chopping the air. Although several factors aided his upset victory that November -- including his lackluster opponent, Thomas E. Dewey, and a strong voter allegiance to the New Deal -- it was Truman himself, the kind of person he was, that mattered most. If there is a lesson to be drawn from the Truman example, it is that.